SUPPLY CHAIN ARTICLES

  • Addressing Challenges In Serialization For Complex Therapeutics

    The magnitude of serialization, especially for firms with extensive portfolios and intricate supply chains, poses serious challenges. This discussion offers solutions.

  • Moderna & The Global mRNA Supply Chain: Regulatory Lessons Learned

    One of the most important reminders I took away from Moderna’s experiences ushering its mRNA vaccine onto the global market is that a commercial manufacturing process must also be accompanied by a commercially ready supply chain. Though sufficient physical volumes of each raw material and a redundant supplier network are necessities, physical scale is not the only “CQA” for which we must account when commercializing our supply chain. 

  • Inside Alnylam's Playbook For High Volume siRNA Production

    As one of the first companies to establish a chemoenzymatic ligation platform, Alnylam's Maines and Nechev are in the perfect position to espouse wisdom on the practical aspects and remaining challenges of implementing enzymatic ligation at a large scale. Here in this installment, Maines and Nechev outline what they’ve learned thus far about the science of enzymatic ligation, while also paying credence to the unknowns and existing barriers that, as a frontrunner, Alnylam will inevitably (but willingly) be tasked with facing in the future.

  • "Mirror, Mirror…": Reflections On Reducing mRNA Production COGS

    Here, I outline three overarching words of wisdom I gleaned from Life Edit Therapeutics’ April Sena; Tune Therapeutics’ Tyler Goodwin; and University of Sheffield’s Adi on how the mRNA/RNA industry can better control production costs — particularly as it relates to raw material sourcing and usage.  

  • Plasmid Production: 3 Key Takeaways For mRNA Manufacturing

    Following my latest Live panel on analytical and manufacturing technology innovations for mRNA production, I wanted to provide a few high-level takeaways I gleaned from our discussion on the overlooked darling of the mRNA space: The plasmid. 

  • “To Thine Own [mRNA Product] Be True:” Shakespeare's Guide To RNA GMP Principles

    In the following article, I offer some of the biggest tips and tricks experts offered during a panel discussion on the challenges of navigating GMP principles in the RNA space today — with a little bit of help from Shakespeare himself. 

SUPPLY CHAIN VIDEOS

Tune in as Roberta Duncan, VP of the mRNA program at Seqirus; Duke Human Vaccine Institute Associate Director of Upstream and Downstream Process Development Jason Dickens, Ph.D.; and Jin Zhou, Executive Director of Process Development for mRNA and Protein Biologics at Ultragenyx share supply chain and manufacturing capacity constraints in the face of the urgency to address COVID-19. This is an excerpt from the Bioprocess Online Live event - mRNA Manufacturing: Bright Future, Big Challenges.

In this Advancing RNA Live clip, Sail Biomedicines’ Marc Wolfgang gives us a brief primer on the main differences and challenges in developing an IVT reaction for circular RNA, as opposed to linear mRNA.    

In this Advancing RNA Live segment, several speakers raise concerns about the industry's ability to accurately measure impurities, particularly dsRNA, arguing that current analytics are insufficient, especially for high-dose therapeutics.

While we can make lots of mRNA at a smaller scale, when it comes to scaling up to kg quantities of mRNA, our current batch processes leave a lot to be desired. Together, Stu Sundseth of Tune Therapeutics and Christian Dohmen of Ethris unpack the biggest barriers to scaling IVT to achieve the desired yield and quality of mRNA, offering their take on how the field is innovating to overcome these issues. 

ARTICLES, APP NOTES, CASE STUDIES, & WHITE PAPERS